Laudator Temporis Acti

Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 115 (tr. Alan H. Sommerstein):

What sound, what scent has been wafted to me, unseen,
from gods, from mortals, or from both together?

τίς ἀχώ, τίς ὀδμὰ προσέπτα μ᾿ἀφεγγής,
θεόσυτος, ἢ βρότειος, ἢ κεκραμένη;

Simonides, Poetae Melici Graeci, no. 638 (my translation):

A flight-causing smell.

φύξιμος ὀδμή.

Ennius, Annals 451 Skutsch (tr. E.H. Warmington):

And the trumpet in terrible tones taratantara blared.

at tuba terribili sonitu taratantara dixit.

Titinius, fragment 20 Ribbeck (my translation):

Meanwhile a stinking breeze assaults the nose.

interea foetida anima nasum oppugnat.

Vergil, Aeneid 3.228 (my translation):

An awful sound amid foul stench.

vox taetrum dira inter odorem.

Dante, Inferno 21.139 (tr. John D. Sinclair):

And he made a trumpet of his rear.

ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.

William Shakespeare, King John 5.2.117:

What lusty trumpet thus doth summon us?

John Milton, Paradise Lost 1.236-237 (where singéd = scorched and involved = surrounded):

A singéd bottom all involved
With stench and smoke.

Tobias Smollett, The Adventures of Roderick Random, Vol. I, Chap. XXXIV:

Heaven preserve me! I am suffocated! Fellow! fellow! away with thee. Curse thee, fellow! get thee gone: I shall be stunk to death!

Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Orpheus," lines 35-37:

What wondrous sound is that, mournful and faint,
But more melodious than the murmuring wind
Which through the columns of a temple glides?

Labels: noctes scatologicae